UNITY BAPTIST CHURCH, TRUSTING WHILE TRYING (SERMON ANALYSIS 1)

Summary: (The preliminary remarks
concern an upcoming festival that this church is either involved in or
responsible for.) If this is going to work, there must be trying and trusting.
The image for the sermon is the trapeze artist. One is a flyer; the other is a
catcher. The flyer must try really hard to get the right momentum and timing,
but he must put his arms up, close his eyes, and trust the catcher to catch
him. If the flyer tries to catch the catcher, it never works. You have to try
and trust. You have done all you can do with a test or buying a house; then you
have to trust. God is the only one who can bring it to pass. Psalm 20 gives us
an example of trying and trusting. Israel would have made a plan
before going to war. But Psalm 20 was
read just before their armies went out to battle. Rather than pull their troops
together for a motivational talk, Israel would go to church. When Israel went out trusting in God, Israel
always won. This is a good Psalm when we’re planning to do a festival or
something like that. (The Psalm is read in responsive reading fashion.) Verse 6
is pretty powerful. ‘Save’ is in the perfect tense, as if it’s already
completed. ‘Now I know that the Lord will save’: future tense, but already
accomplished. Now I want to share two observations. (A): the name of the game.
The name of God is the name of the game. His name brackets the Psalm. Verse 1:
‘May the God of Jacob protect you.’ Then verse 7: ‘We trust in the name of the
LORD.’ Why do we bless a name? The name is Jehovah: I am that I am, or I will
be what I will be. When we trust in his name, we trust in his character, his
commitment to us, and remember his promises kept in the past. We trust in him
to be powerful, loving, and just. Also, his name means to accept that he is
sovereign, that he is God and we are not. It means that we do not try to
manipulate him. We trust in more than our perceptions. We accept whatever he
chooses to do. So we pray in Jesus’ name, for the baby we want, for the job,
for that healing, or for the mission. We trust in him, in his character, as if
it’s already done. (B): the heart of the matter. Verse 4: ‘May he give you the
desire of your heart, and may all your plans succeed.’ Would it not be
terrifying if that actually came true? What would follow is frustration, chaos,
and anger. When we pray, we want our heart’s desire to come true. But we must
acknowledge that we don’t always know what is best. Verse 3 does not mean that
after you have given your offerings, God is obligated to give you the desires
of your heart. What it is saying is that when you’ve recognized that God is
God, and made your heart right with him, then you are in God’s will, and he’ll
want to bless you. May he give you ‘according’ to your heart. So according to
the ‘nature of your heart.’ Are you right with him? Are you obeying him?
Whatever we do, we need to try our best and ultimately trust God. We pray that
God would answer our prayers according to his name, based on his character and
promises. And we can say, ‘Lord, may it be done according to our hearts.’ (He
finishes with a brief prayer.)

Remarks: Mr. McLaren is easy to listen
to. The sermon is delivered with sincerity. An outline is followed. Some actual
teaching takes place. The sovereignty of God is acknowledged as the overarching
factor to be kept in mind while petitioning. The word, in its particular parts,
at least, is not irreverently treated when touched upon. And though a movie is
mentioned, this is not done in levity.

Typically, a Red
Deer sermon deserves more censure than praise. This
one is typical, though it is far from the worst one that we’ve heard. We’ll drop
our censorious remarks under the following heads: What is taught? And then: How
does the superficial teaching come about?

What is taught? Not much is taught. And so the
analysis should be one of our shortest. Psalm 20 is used by this pastor to prop
up his pep talk. The pep talk is for the purpose of stimulating the
congregation to do well at the upcoming festival. A cursory reading of Psalm 20
yields a theme of trusting God, not while trying, like the pastor says, but in
time of trouble. The ‘trying’ focus comes in because the pastor would pump his
people up for the festival. Trusting in God’s name is to trust in his
attributes to perform his promises. The pastor lays that down okay. But when he
comes to what he calls ‘the heart of the matter’ (by which he means the
granting of our petitions), the subject rises no higher than our earthly wants:
the job, the baby, the passed test. Psalm 20 is a prayer in prospect of
warfare. Should the obvious application not be, then, our prayer in prospect of
spiritual warfare? And what are the eminent petitions to be won against our
enemy? Is it not holiness to overcome flesh and sin? Is it not modesty and
peace in the face of an extravagant, violent world? Is it not steadfast faith
and the whole armor of God to ricochet all the tempting darts of Satan? It is
by petitioning for these greater, more important things that we come most
unselfishly to Jesus Christ, by whose life, death, and resurrection the
Christian’s victory is assured against our greatest foes. Serious Commentaries
can see Jesus in this Psalm somewhere; this sermon does not. Serious
Commentaries do not apply this Psalm to petitions for earthly desires; this
sermon does. What helps us to trust God for the right job or a future baby?
Being told to trust him for these things? No, there is a better, more spiritual
way. We are better helped when Jesus’ victory is preached to us, through which
all things, by faith, are possible. It is by having our eyes elevated above our
earthly petitions that we come up to accept, without repining, the outcome
whatever it be. The sovereignty of God over our petitions is the proviso we
praise the sermon for including. But because the petitions preached on by the
pastor are limited to things that will pass away instead of things that carry
into eternity, like holiness and
love, he who is the same yesterday, today, and forever is not given a place of prominence in this sermon. This
sermon is not devilish, but it is somewhat earthly. (See James 3.15.) And
because the listeners are urged to participate in this festival in order to
have fun and be ‘relational’ with the community, we have reason to assert that
it is a little sensual as well. ‘Relating’ to our neighbors usually comes down
to participating in small talk about sports and movies, the result of which is
a show to the world that Christians are not a different species at all, when,
in fact, in the Bible they are called a holy, royal priesthood and other
similar, distinguishing names. If this festival was your typical Christian outreach
effort, then we know that we’re not exaggerating our pessimism. The current
belief is to get your witness in by showing the world that you are no different
and no better. The biblical witness, in contrast, will assert and demonstrate
that there is a difference. There is a difference of hobbies and habits,
lifestyles and interests. Once we were no different, “when we were in the
flesh, the motions of sins…did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto
death” (Romans 7.5.) And “now we are delivered from the law…that we should
serve in newness of spirit” (verse 6.) Did conversations at the festival get to
this uncomfortable level of explicating the dichotomy between the unregenerate
and the Christian? If not, then this sermon proved a failure. But maybe the
festival was meant just as a means of building bridges, nothing more. Many
Christians speak hopefully and affectionately of building bridges. But have any
of these festival bridges been crossed, we wonder? The content of Romans 7
would be an uneasy and perhaps dishonest dialogue for the Christian to engage
in with the worldling if the motions of sin are indeed still operating in that
Christian through the television set and the local theater. How can a Christian
appear sincere in his testimony if the motions of sin he should have left
behind are his point of contact with the one he is supposedly witnessing to?
Maybe the Christian is not giving his assent to the sins and lifestyles that he
watches on the screen. That will be his argument. But the watching world does
not translate his participation like that. The watching world knows that the
Christian watches sin for entertainment, that he watches because he likes it,
and that this watching is de facto assent to what he’s looking at.

How does the superficial teaching come about? It
seems clear that the pastor began with an idea for a sermon in support of his
festival venture. He wants his congregation to trust while they try in order to
the desired result at this festival. Hence his title, ‘Trusting while Trying.’
A sermon is bound to fall apart when we begin with self instead of Scripture.
Psalm 20 is not foundational here, but the festival. The Psalm is tacked on as
a desperate resort to hold up an idea, an idea that the Psalm is not intended
to support. The sermon begins with remarks on a festival, which remarks are
then shod with wheels from a carnival illustration, and then the whole idea is
supposed to roll when Psalm 20 is plugged into it for generation. This is to
treat Scripture very terribly, as the power we want to drive our circus car
with. It should remind us of the carnal use of God’s ark, for which the
children of Israel
were punished. The first point in the sermon is called ‘the name of the game.’
Why? Because of the trapeze artist, of course, not because of what’s in the
Psalm. The trapeze artist hangs way up in the sermon where Psalm 20 belongs.
He, not the Psalm, is relied on to carry the first point. Psalm 20 is just the
trapping brought in to help catch the trapeze artist and the festival. It is
not the main thing. Is something wrong when the Scripture text is forced down
to an inferior place and made nothing but the pep for a people on their way to
a festival? This Psalm is about trusting God in our warfare. It should not be made
the handmaiden of our little enterprise. It is there to speak out truth to us,
not for us to speak ideas into it. ‘The name of the game’—how does that follow
from ‘trusting and trying?’ It does not. How does ‘the heart of the matter’
follow, either from the first point, ‘the name of the game,’ or from ‘trusting
while trying,’ which is the title? There is no harmony in any of this. The
points do not follow the title; the second point does not follow from the first
point. The sermon is a weak fabrication, with a Psalm gratuitously thrown in to
give some pep to people the pastor suspects might slouch. The title, the
points, and the Psalm, are like disconnected cars designed to pull this
festival along. It doesn’t work. It can’t work, for the sacred engine, the
Psalm, is not in front and not hooked up to the rest.

Conclusion: When the pastor alludes to Israel using
Psalm 20 in their worship before going to war, he emphasizes this good practice
of theirs by contrasting it with what they did not do: pull the troops together
for a motivational talk. That’s very interesting, for instead of preaching the
Psalm as a text of worship for holy warfare, the pastor makes it serve his
motivational speech for the festival affair! The truth of how to properly
handle this text is right in the research he did, and yet he goes on to do the
very thing that he says Israel
knew better than to rely on! This treatment of Psalm 20 is textual malpractice.
When it becomes understood how reverently the content of God’s word is supposed
to be touched, handled, and delivered, the inevitable question that gets begged
from this pastor’s treatment of the sacred word is his calling. To question a
ministerial calling (just to raise the inkling of a doubt about it!) is
unacceptable these days. But if you do not doubt a man’s calling who handles
the word of God in this way, then there is something wrong, not only with him,
but with you too. The question should naturally pose itself to your mind if or once you realize that the text of God’s word is not being allowed
to teach, but instead made to serve as an addendum in support of a pastor’s pet
project. The question that should drift through your mind when you see this
done (if you have eyes, the mental vision, to see it) is this: Does God call men
to fill pulpits who treat his word in this way? Is that a shepherd who coaxes
his sheep to jump a fence to who knows where when he should be occupied in
feeding them? We’re not saying the man is not called to minister. We say that
his treatment of the word naturally raises a doubt in the mind of an attentive
listener. It’s not something that can be helped. And it’s not something that
has to be kept secret. If all pastors were made to consider their callings once
in awhile, sermons would be better, and better results would surely follow. It
is no surprise that from treating the word of God in his pragmatic manner, no
conviction of anything is brought to our heart by the address. This talk is
thin, but it’s not sharp like the word that slices through joints and marrow.
It is because the idea of man is wielded here, not the substance of the word.
If the word were wielded, sin and guilt would fly out from the cut, and the
people would be made to feel, react, and repair to Jesus Christ for salvation
or consolation. This sermon carries no disturbance to anyone; and therefore
little comfort will be sought on account of it. It is a routine, terrestrial
performance that, unless renovated to its core, no amount of trusting and
trying can fix.

Mr. McLaren, because we have had no occasion to
communicate with you, let the following copy of our analysis be our first
encounter. Maybe you have sometimes wondered what that would look like if some
persons took one of your sermons, without partisan favor influencing their
effort, and subjected it to Scripture scrutiny. This analysis can be much more
useful to you than the pats on the back that you receive on Sunday, if you take
it to heart in prayer. If you would like to talk about our findings, or if you
would like to receive our upcoming second analysis of your work, we welcome you
to contact us. If you choose to ignore us, we will not hound you. At some
future date, the analyses of your sermons, God permitting, will be featured on
our blogsite. In the meantime, you may scour this blog to read similar analyses
of sermons preached by many of your colleagues. We have been so pleased to find
ourselves reaping the increase of spiritual discernment through the obedience
of such texts as 1 John 4.1 and 1 Thessalonians 5.21! We should not be
surprised that obedience yields at least a little insight. Praise God with us,
for this idea that dropped down from heaven, to do this Bible-Based
Sermon-Group! May the scrutiny of your own sermons, and that of your colleagues
too, yield the same blessings to your soul! Things can get better when we face
our faults full on and endeavor to improve, even though the passage to success
may be hurtful, hard, and grim. We believe in the reverent treatment of God’s
holy word!

(One’s level of piety, whether devotional or practical, depends much on knowledge being either learned or misconceived. In these analyses we...

WHAT'S IN THE ARCHIVE

In the archive you will find extensive, thorough reviews of sermons delivered by pastors in Red Deer. These reviews, or analyses, are given to represent the content of what is being taught in the churches of this city and the manner in which this is done. Currently, there are over two dozen analyses on this site; they have subjected the pastors of 8 churches to the test of Scripture. Jump into the blog and into your Bible to see how true to Scripture your pastor's teachings and methods are. Scroll down to our book lists, make some prayerful choices from there, and go shopping at Amazon.ca or some place like that. The best books to read are not generally sold at your local Christian book store. Solomon's advice to get understanding is terrible advice to ignore.

TOP TEN BOOKS FOR HARD READERS

(2) HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY (J. H. MERLE D'AUBIGNE, 1846)

(3) PENSEES (BLAISE PASCAL, 1669; 1844)

(4) OLD TESTAMENT BIBLE HISTORY (ALFRED EDERSHEIM, 1876-1887; 1890)

(5) EXPOSITION OF THE EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS (ROBERT HALDANE, 1839)

(6) THE REFORMERS AND THE THEOLOGY OF THE REFORMATION (WILLIAM CUNNINGHAM, 1862)

(7) DISCUSSIONS, VOL 3 (R. L. DABNEY, 1892, 1897)

(8) STUDIES IN THEOLOGY (B. B. WARFIELD, 1932)

(9) MEMOIRS OF JONATHAN EDWARDS (SERENO E. DWIGHT, ed., c. 1834)

(10) THE CITY OF GOD (AUGUSTINE, 426)

MANY FALSE PROPHETS ARE GONE OUT INTO THE WORLD

1 JOHN 4.1

ABOUT WOLVES IN SHEEP'S CLOTHING

WE ARE NOT IMPLYING THAT ALL SERMONS REVIEWED HERE ARE THE WORKS OF WOLVES (FALSE TEACHERS) INSTEAD OF SHEEP (TRUE PROFESSORS.) BUT IF 'MANY FALSE PROPHETS' ARE GONE OUT INTO THE WORLD, THEY MUST RESIDE SOMEWHERE, AND IT SHOULD BE NO SURPRISE TO FIND A FEW OF THESE IN RED DEER. THEREFORE OUR WARNING IS JUST, AND THE APOSTLE WOULD APPROVE OUR QUOTING HIM. A WOLF MAY BE DISTINGUISHED FROM A SHEEP BY THE KIND OF GOSPEL HE PREACHES, WHETHER TRUE, OR FALSE. THIS IS THE CHIEF DISTINCTIVE.